David Ely

If a new iPhone comes out that has a built-in video camera, it’s not a leap to imagine they’d introduce an iChat app with it that lets you transmit video while you talk. Problem is, the camera’s on the opposite side of the phone from the screen, so if you point it at yourself, you can’t see the other person’s video. They could put two cameras on it, with one facing toward you, but I don’t see that happening. Maybe instead it’d more one-way in design. The idea that you would be talking to someone and want them to be able to see something cute your cat’s doing or whatever. You take the phone away from your ear (Maybe it automatically switches to speaker even), hit “send video”, and then point the camera at it. Your friend gets the video in realtime, and then you go back to talking. It’s not video chat, but honestly, how useful is video chat? Seeing someone’s face adds a little to the conversation, but not a whole lot, and it means you’re devoting your eyes to the task and not doing the stuff many people do when they talk on the phone like fold laundry, play video games, etc.

I guess Belkin or someone could sell a little video iPhone conference call stand. You’d put your iPhone in it and it would have a few mirrors to get your face into the phone’s camera while still letting you face the front toward you. Or of course a snap-on front-facing camera accessory for $50.

Of course every Mac has video chat built in already, and I don’t know that people use that often. Partly just because my phone can ring at any point, but I need to have my computer awake and be signed into iChat to receive a video chat invitation. Maybe a video iPhone could let me receive a call on my phone and then transfer it to my Mac? The conversation could keep going through Bluetooth but I’d get the video on my Mac with its iSight camera in a better position to have a face-to-face conversation.